Workmen's advocate., 1887-04-09
AN OLD CHESTNUT.
THE THEORY OF THE SURVI-
 VAL OF. THE .FlTTEST.
The Spread of Economical Knowledge Means the Spread of Socialism. The "Fittest or the Best !'
 Capitalism fayOrs
 the Worst.

A leW years ago tiie uclellucls ol
 Capitalism thought it sufficient to dispose of what they are pleased to term the "fallacles of Socialism" by declaring that a little knowledge of political economy was all that was necessary to clear the brain of such rubbish. In their innocence they even went so far as to pay for lec- lures on the "dismal science" for the purpose of checkmatIng the Socialists. They are now beginning to realize that the spread of the knowledge of economics means the spread of Solialism, and great IS the consternation which this discovery is making. One of the great London dailies in commenting on the rapid spread of Socal-Democracy, blurted out the awkward fact that all educa- ted German workingmen are Social ists, and some of those who helped to pass the Education Act through the English Parliament are begin ming to fear that they made mis- take. The working classes, they find, are not so easily hoodwinked as they once were, and are beginning to laugh at the balderdash of the othodox political economists. They no longer believe that their poverty IS due to memorable laws, to "unkind skies," or to the niggardliness of na- ture but to the system of society which compels them to sell their labor-force for subsistence wages to the monopolists who own the land and all the other means of produc- tion. If We hear less nowadays of the so-called arguments based on po- litical economy we are beginning to hear more of objections based on the Darwinian doctrine of the survival of the fittest, which, it is said, we in our pitiable ignorance. overlook altogether. It is said: Granted that those who by their labor pro duce all the wealth of the country are doomed to life of poverty and privation, and that an idle and use- less class live in luxury on the rob bery of the workers, it is better not to disturb this state of things, or you would bring the comforts and enjoy ments of life and the boon of leisure within the reach of all and thus put stop to the struggle for existence and the survival of the tittest. It is cooly assumed that the word ''tit- test" necessarily means the best, and that to put an end to the hellish war fare, euphemistically termed compe- tition, would stop progress and lead to a deterioration of the human race by allowing the unfit to survive and propagate their kind. We Social Democrats maintain that in the in- cessant strife of modern commerce the higher and nobier instincts of humanity instead of being strength ened and developed are weakened and crushed out. As competition waxes keener, cant, cunning and cruelty are more and more necessa- ry to make successful man of bus mess. The heartless wretch who grinds the faces of his wage-slaves the most mercilessly and remorse- lessly is able to undersell any of his competitors in the market who may have sufficient humanity, or what he would term weakness, to hesitate to force down wages below subsist- ence level. The greediest, the most brutal, and the most interruptions are thus the fittest for the conditions as they now exist. The same thing applies to the victims of capitalism. It is not the most independent work man who Is chosen as the employers lickspittle and spy; it is not the man who has the heart to sympathlze with his distressed fellow workers who is promoted to the. post of slave driver, but the man who can get the